Windows Media Format

Strengths

1. Windows Media Player provides high quality delivery of video to all levels of users. Windows Media Server is the most reliable and powerful in the industry. Windows Media support for live streaming is far ahead of all other platforms. Content creation tools such as Windows Media Encoder are free.

2. Existing Windows Media content can be delivered cross platform via Silverlight, a browser plugin technology similar to Flash, leveraging the same server your WMV files are already hosted on.

3. Windows Media supportes HD streaming very well. CPU loads on clients are much more tolerable than what h.264 (Flash/Quicktime) demand. Windows Media codecs are comparable to h.264, but encoding and decoding of the media is much more efficient.

4. Live event streaming can be accomplished without expensive encoder hardware. SD resolution video can easily be encoded full screen in realtime on a dual-core laptop computer.

5. The DoIT Streaming Service supports Windows Media format. Windows Media is the most widely used format hosted on our servers.

Weaknesses

1. Windows Media has a low install base among Macintosh users. It is, of course, installed on all PCs today (95% of the market). The Flip4Mac Quicktime plugin allows Quicktime to play most Windows Media files. Microsoft Silverlight provides cross platform support for Windows Media, and ultimately will replace the above Macintosh player solutions with a Flash-like platform independent player solution.